


The Grand Hotel Abyss

by asuralucier



Category: Altered Carbon (TV), John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Altered Carbon Fusion, Canon Typical Everything, Creepy Hotel AI!Winston, Daisy is Alive and Saves Lives, Dubious Consent, Earn Your Happy Ending, Identity Porn, John is an Envoy with 99 problems but a bitch ain't one, M/M, Memory Loss, Orwellian references because Blantons started in 1984, Science Fiction, Temporary Character Death, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25675210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: “I thought it would be better this way. To be safe than sorry.” Winston follows John’s gaze, but mostly as a matter of courtesy. He doesn’t seem particularly interested. “For the record—I’m sorry if I real-deathed any of your friends, Jonathan. I imagine they’re hard to come by given the business you’re in.”. . . .WARNING: gratuitous technology in a crapsack world ahead.John Wick is a rogue Envoy on the run after refusing to perform a task for the High Table, a mysterious and expansive criminal organization. He finds unexpected refuge in the New Manhattan Continental, a long abandoned AI hotel run by Winston, who has not had a guest in fifty years.
Relationships: John Wick/Winston
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24
Collections: Crossworks 2020





	The Grand Hotel Abyss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).



> I started this way back as a treat for you in F5k because I was so tickled by Winston the creepy, lonely hotel AI. But then I fell down the wormhole that is worldbuilding and here we are. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> With thanks to Citystardust, flowerdeluce, Karios, and StripySock.

**___0 0 1. Wake up**

_He’s never seen the sea, its wide blue-black swathe so broad and endless, nearly a world in itself. His toes, prickled by the bedrock and the rough granules of sand._

_“What are you doing, John?”_

.

.

.

What a good dream. A break from his usual, for sure.

.

.

.

“Wake up, please.” 

John doesn’t want to, particularly, but consciousness assaults him at every turn. Several spots of bright pain appear as distant spotlights in the warm darkness that surrounds him, far away, but impossible to ignore. He tries to speak, the sound that leaves his throat isn’t anything close. 

A man in his position is meant to be ready for the next life at any point. But nowadays, death isn’t what it used to be. There is no telling where John’s going to wake up. There’s no telling when he might get some rest. 

“I won’t have you bleed out in my lobby, Mr. Wick. It’s a matter of propriety.” 

_John. Wick_. The name comes back to him like a wave, a comforting buzz over his neural net. Armed with his name, opening his eyes is less of a challenge, but a part of John still doesn’t want to make the effort. He’s exhausted. More than anything else, his name reminds him of how tired he is. No matter how he shifts the weight, his name seeks to crush him like a lonely anvil. The mother of all existential threats. The very thing you are, it's fucking out to get you. 

"Wake up."

John does. He thinks, rather unhappily, that he’s always been good at following orders. It’s what the High Table has always valued most about him. It’s what makes him a good Envoy. He learns a new path to obedience every time he’s spun back up and sooner or later, it’s got to bite somebody square in the ass.

Standing over him is a man—no, not a man—only something close to one. Of course, John knows how to look for a glitch. They call it glitching, and this...man, it’s still easier to think of him that way, is probably as old as he looks. But for now, John has survival on the brain and everything fucking hurts.

John tries to move. He barely lifts one hand, before the pain returns in full force, assaulting him in earnest. No matter, if he fries this brain, then they’ll get him a new one, taking out all the bits they don’t like. It’s not as if they haven’t done it before. Come to think of it, he has no idea why he’s been allowed to think of the sea, or her voice. If he strains his memory, his Swiss cheese of a brain might just about manage a name...

Nothing. No dice.

Something else he doesn’t know: Swiss cheese—how exactly does it adequately describe the state of someone’s brain? Not knowing the particulars of a thing no longer bothers John, so long as he knows enough.

And if he can get some rest. Staying awake is such a chore. If John goes back to sleep, maybe he won’t be in such immutable pain. 

The man is watching him, eerily still. “Now, now, Mr. Wick, let’s not run before we can walk. In your case, if you’ll permit me—let’s not walk before we can crawl, perhaps. You’re badly injured.” 

“Nothing I haven’t been before,” John grits out, trying to shake his head. His skull feels as if it weighs a million pounds. “Let me rest. I want to rest.” 

A thumb, entirely too smooth to belong to anything living, passes over John’s pulse under his jaw. “You’ll die if you rest, Mr. Wick. Better to stay awake, I think.” 

“I can’t die. I won’t,” John mutters. “If I do, they’ll just take out my stack and put me somewhere else. They—they always do. They—” A word is at the tip of his tongue, but John’s too tired to reach for even that. 

“Who is _they_ , Mr. Wick?” Now, the touch, light as a feather before turns heavy, as weighted as an anvil on his neck. As much as John wants to rest, this man is being a bother. “Given that you have subjected my fine establishment to imminent danger, don’t you think I ought to know about it?—Mr. Wick. Mr. Wick, I must insist that you remain...” 

. . . .

Awake. 

But no better for it, the second time around. John wakes with a jolt, but he doesn’t manage to jolt very far. An inch or two off of an unfamiliar mattress, its lumps and aging springs an unpleasant memory against his spine. 

John’s trussed up, wrists and feet bound to the four bedposts, and the man is there, watching him again. John expects cool, unforgiving metal, but the ties are some sort of old soft plastic and cut into his skin.

“If you promise to be calm, Mr. Wick, I’m not averse to untying you. You see, you’ve already done a number on my hotel. I need to protect myself.” 

The lights in the room are dim, and John struggles to adjust. Finally, he gives up and lets himself fall. The mattress is almost giving, once John gives it a chance, almost comfortable. 

“Where am I?” 

“Do you not remember?” 

John remembers, but mostly piecemeal. He remembers holding a dead woman in his arms when she’d been shot through the head; he remembers her blood sticky on his hands. He remembers a sharp stab of a bullet through to his ankle. He remembers scooping up a whimpering puppy pawing at the—

“Dog,” John manages. “I remember that I...”

"Your dog is fine, unharmed, for the most part." The man fixes him with a curious look. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I will fetch Daisy for you, no doubt she’s still scouting the premises for straggling intruders. It’s how I am able to remain here with you.” 

Before John can enquire further, the soft pitter-patter of paws enters the room and takes up his attention. The little footfalls sound uneven, as if she’s injured herself. The beagle that appears in John’s line of sight, jumping up next to him on the bed, indeed has a bandage around her left hind leg. She takes a moment her injured leg carefully under herself so as to not fall off the bed, but also not to take up too much of John’s space. Then she just looks at him. John gets the feeling Daisy is waiting for something, permission, maybe. 

“You fixed her up?” 

The man apologizes, “I’m not used to having four-legged patrons. I’ve done the best I could. At least she’s up and moving around, which is more than I could—can say for you.” 

John glances at his suspended wrists again. “You call this helping?” 

“I try to be a cautious man when I can manage.” 

John blinks sluggishly. _You’re not a man_ , is nearly on the tip of his tongue. But then again, that’s not such a rare thing now, and it seems rude of him to accuse his impromptu host of not disclosing himself as such. “What did you call her? How did you know her name?”

“Daisy,” the—man volunteers mildly, “it’s the name on her collar, and she told me. Pretty little name for a pretty little lady.” 

“Right.” John looks away from the man and instead turns his gaze on the beagle, Daisy, who stares right back at him, her eyes imbued with a keen human consciousness. Finally, when John angles his chin towards her, in as best a gesture of invitation as he can manage in his current position, she approaches him, noses purposefully against his neck as if she means to check his pulse. 

“Like I said, Mr. Wick, if you behave yourself, I’ll untie you.” So saying, the man goes over to where John lay on the bed, positioning himself near where John’s left wrist is restrained, and simply waits, the whole of him inhumanly still. Still, he looks enough like a man and John isn’t the type to overthink things. His employers have made sure of that. 

John nods. “All right.” 

This time, John doesn't flinch. Besides, he’s been touched by things stranger and more unpleasant than skin smooth as glass. John would do well to remember that. By the looks of it, he has not been tied up too long, There are no bruises on his wrists that indicate long-term captivity. 

Not that that would have been surprising either. John doesn't wear a watch and time feels liquid in his skull. Still, John has to wait until enough blood has made its way back into his fingers before he tries to move again. He settles his palm on top of Daisy’s head, and the beagle looks up at him, big brown eyes dark and somber. 

_“What are you doing, John?”_

. . . .

It’s not until they sit down to have dinner, that John asks the man his name. Dinner is a simple affair: a run-down dining room meant to serve meals more grandiose meals than whatever the man has put in front of him. The man himself eats nothing, but avails himself of a heavy-bottomed tumbler filled to the brim with a thin golden liquid. “Bourbon,” he explains, “made the old-fashioned way like we're still in 1984. Not that synthetic stuff everyone has settled for nowadays. Needless to say, it's very illegal.” 

John says, “I see. Well, I don't drink. I like to be on my toes.” 

John’s dinner consists of rations; he’s never had to eat any, but he’s heard stories, and it turns out to be every bit as bad as the legends have it. Colorless lumps that don’t taste of anything, but will keep him alive. Come to think of it, John can’t remember the last time he’s eaten. He thinks about offering some of it to Daisy, who hasn’t moved from her station besides his chair. But then, he stops. The look she’s got on her face says to John that he shouldn’t even try. 

The man nearly looks sympathetic. “My supplies are cut off, as you can imagine, Mr. Wick, if we don’t want a repeat visit from your friends from earlier, that is how it must be. But the New Manhattan Continental is still a place of hospitality and I its proprietor. I shall try my best to get you what you need. To be of service.” The man is watching him again with a needling eye. “You may call me the Manager.” 

John gives a pointed look towards the man’s—rather, the Manager’s—old-fashioned bourbon, and decides not to state the obvious. 

“What if I don’t want to call you the Manager?” 

“I beg your pardon?” 

John finds that he can’t quite explain it, the sudden distaste that he feels for this self-important title that the man has bestowed upon himself, even if the title has merit. “You have a name, right? Something that your friends call you. I’m sick of titles.” He doesn't quite know why, but he knows he's sick in the head. Sick of faceless entities with titles dictating his every move.

“Now that is a very human question,” said the Manager, the faintest of smiles curling at the edges of his mouth, “I suppose that puts me at ease, Mr. Wick, I was almost uncertain myself. It’s not every day that a man makes me doubt myself. I was called Winston, once.”

“Winston.” John sounds the name out, teasing its syllables on the tip of his tongue. “I’ve heard that name before.”

. . .

**____0 0 2. Metempsychosis**

_A man, speaking in a click-clicking accent like a gun emptying its chamber of bullets. John has heard that voice before, but its owner otherwise eludes him._

_The thing about dreams, Mr. Wick, is that they’re not subject to limitations of the frail human body. It’s the great frontier of endless possibility. See, if I shove you out of this window, you’ll remember how your bones shatter. Then perhaps, you might be less inclined to try it a second time. Your greatest strength isn’t necessarily your gumption, it’s in how much you retain from one life to the next._

"Wake up, Jonathan."

_Then he's falling, falling_

_falling_

“...That’s not my name,” John murmurs. Waking up is so unpleasant now, but then, it’s not as if he’s unused to it. He keeps his eyes firmly closed, but then other sensations of consciousness overwhelm him in turn. He’s aware of how brittle he is, how little of a chance he has if he gets thrown out of a window to fall—

.

.

“I’m aware that it’s not what your friends call you, no.”

John knows that if he opens his eyes, he’ll see the Manager, Winston. He knows that he’s going to awaken to a pool of unnatural sweat, to a coldness that doesn’t seem quite to belong. And yet, it’s that same coldness that has followed John around all of his life, keeping its distance at select times, but then never leaving him alone for long.

“What are you doing in my room, Winston?” John’s eyelids are too heavy to keep open.

“I don’t like it when my guests are in distress.” Winston’s voice floats above him, insistent and present. No matter how John turns and tosses inside of his small cocooned consciousness, Winston is still impossible to escape. “Especially now, since the place is damn near empty.”

“You do know that doesn’t make any sense.” John screws his eyes shut even tighter just to make a point of it.

“Perhaps not,” Winston says, sounding surprisingly agreeable. John hears soft footfalls, as if Winston were approaching the bed in earnest. But he can’t tell for sure, until he feels a slight dip of the mattress near his ankle, accompanied by the soft groaning of old bed springs. “So long as you’re not being very forthcoming, Jonathan, do you mind if I ask you another question? One having to do with Housekeeping. It hasn’t anything to do with you.”

What John really wants to do is to go back to sleep. He hurts less that way, but the moment he starts to relax, the best he can, shedding the pain that screws tight around every joint of his body, he remembers...

. . . Falling

“Only if I get to ask you one first,” John says, “If I’m your guest, I’m within my rights.”

There is a brief silence, as if Winston is thinking things over. Finally, he says, “Very well. I suppose that’s only fair.”

“Have you ever...died before?” The truth is, John thinks about dying all the time. He can’t help it; now, it's only a little different, he can run and sink into the dark blue sea all by himself. “Because I fucking have. And I will again.”

If anything, John is almost relieved that he can still get angry. His anger has always been good to him; it’s something he owns, something that’s under his control and no one else’s. For whatever reason, the anger has always followed him from sleeve to sleeve, no matter how hard expert cleaners hired by the High Table try to scrub it out of his stack like it’s some kind of nasty bug.

But without fail, his anger is there, nesting in a dark corner, until John needs it again. Now, he clings to it for dear life. With nothing to rail against, his anger is quick to subside, but he thinks he feels better already.

Then John feels a smooth hand settle on top of his head. “Not in the way you think, perhaps, but I’m no stranger to what you perceive as death.” Then, Winston’s smooth fingers seem to tighten in John’s hair, as if attempting to keep a hold of him. “—Jonathan? Jonathan, you’re shaking. Is anything the matter?” 

The shaking is something else that John has lived with for a long time throughout his countless lives. Sometimes, he doesn’t even notice it, but now that Winston has drawn specific attention to it, it feels as if the small tremors at the tips of his fingers and toes have been given a new life and now he can’t help but pay attention to it. The tremors engulf him like an all-consuming wave, dwarfing every other detail in the room. Perhaps if John’s life were in imminent danger, he could forget about it again.

“It’s metempsychosis,” John says, feeling even the words shake in his throat. “Sleeve sickness, I mean. It goes away. Eventually. Always does. I’m. I’m used to it.” All the same, John isn’t so keen for the metempsychosis to subside. Once it does, the only thing he has to look forward to is the next time that the disease revisits him in a new sleeve. 

Winston’s expression shifts one exacting inch. “Oh? How interesting.”

“Yeah,” John agrees, “interesting. Will you leave me alone now? I want to go back to sleep.”

Winston does not respond.

Finally, John opens his eyes to find the man still staring at him with fervent interest. “I don’t think that would be wise, Jonathan. You don’t seem very well.”

"No shit."

Winston doesn’t look too impressed with John’s efforts to stick up for himself. He thinks for a moment before speaking again, withdrawing his hand and sticking it inside of his jacket pocket: “It’s been some time for me, Jonathan, but I think I might have something to help you with your metempsychosis. Provided you bear with me, I’ll have to look for it. It no longer has pride of place given the dire state of my business.” 

He starts to stand, and John can’t explain it, but he reaches out a hand and manages at the last second to catch Winston around the wrist. John doesn’t know why, but suddenly, he can’t bear the thought of being alone.

“I said it goes away,” John says, “I don’t—" _want you to leave me alone._

"I won't be long, a few minutes at the most," Winston tells him, he looks almost pleased with himself, having anticipated John's thought process. "It's not as if I can go far, anyway."

"Why?"

Winston shrugs. “I can’t go far. This place is beholden to me, and I to it. For better or for worse.”

“What, like you’re married or something?”

“An apt comparison, in its own way,” Winston breaks John’s grip, but so gently that John almost doesn’t feel him do it. “Ever had the pleasure, Jonathan?” 

“No.” John shook his head. “Don’t think I ever will, either. And that’s not what I meant, Winston, okay?” 

“All right,” Winston agrees amiably enough. “What did you mean, Jonathan?”

“Why are you even helping me? You have no idea what kind of trouble I’m in. But I...I don’t want you to leave me alone.” It hurts him to ask, but the moment the words leave his mouth, John feels better. 

Something strange and heavy flickers across Winston’s face, the expression staying for but a second, a glitch too short for John to spot, and he can’t help but feel as if he’s missed something. A strange hollow yearning thumps against his skull; John feels it between shakes.

After a moment, Winston holds out his hand again. “Then I won’t. You can come with me. As for why? I guess you could say I’m used to trouble. Used to get all sorts around here. I almost miss it.”

. . . .

“How long is...used to, exactly?” 

Winston, with John’s right arm slung heavy across his shoulders, proceeds to peer up at him from under his armpit, his eyebrows knit together in a stern, if bemused line. “What do you mean?” 

With each step, John feels the metempsychosis set in more and more, the tremors threatening to dislodge bone from its nearby muscle. When they finally reach the landing of the second floor, staring down at the pile of bodies still littering the lobby, John gives Winston a pointed look. “I mean, I thought you were used to trouble.” 

Winston makes a noise in his throat, nearly unamused, but he follows that up with a casual shrug of one shoulder, as if trying to brush away the responsibility. “Being used to trouble also means the smell won’t bother you that much, Jonathan. I take it you’re similarly used to trouble?” 

John says, “More or less.” 

“Anyway.” Winston goes on, as if John hadn’t spoken at all. “It’s been something like fifty years. I doubt that any of my old cleanup crew is still around...” Winston trails off. 

They arrive at the bottom of the stairs without incident. 

John can’t help but look at the bodies piled there in the lobby, each with a very distinct cut at the back of the head. It’s suddenly clear what’s happened and John jolts forward, feeling Winston tightening his grip on his arm, but John’s shaking legs suddenly _give_ , and...

John tries to speak, but is instead overcome by the sensation of

. . . Falling

“Their stacks. You’ve…” 

“I thought it would be better this way. To be safe than sorry.” Winston follows John’s gaze, but mostly as a matter of courtesy. He doesn’t seem particularly interested. “For the record—I’m sorry if I real-deathed any of your friends, Jonathan. I imagine they’re hard to come by given the business you’re in.” 

“The High Table would never send Envoys who knew me to hunt me. It doesn’t work that way.” John says, but without thinking and he realizes too late that he’s said too much. He ought to get up; the unimaginable stench is a great motivator to get to his feet again. John manages, more or less, to do that on his own. Winston seems to be lost in thought for the time being, perhaps, taking yet another moment to mourn for the state of his establishment. 

Winston regards him narrowly. “The High Table?” The words leave his mouth slowly, like he’s still getting used to them. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it,” John says. 

“Oh, I have.” Winston assures him with a thin, two-dimensional smile. “Just...” 

“Not the way that I know it?” 

“You’re a fast learner, Jonathan. Come over here by the bar. Have a seat. I have a sneaking suspicion I remember where it is.” 

Winston seems satisfied that John can stand and move around on his own, despite his obvious difficulties, both from his earlier injuries, and from the metempsychosis. It’s hard to distinguish between the two—where one discomfort ends and the other begins, or in fact, if it even matters. John’s hands and feet quake from the difficulty, but he gets there in the end, hauling himself up on a creaky, unsteady stool with what feels like the last of his strength.

John tries his best to pay attention to Winston, to exactly what he’s up to, as the man clearly has the advantage no matter how John slices it. It won’t take much for Winston to take him out, now that all of John’s borrowed limbs are conspiring against him together all at once. 

“You’re afraid, Jonathan, but you shouldn’t be.”

“I’m not...” John decides against arguing. He opts for a question instead; so far, Winston has avoided answering any of his questions, and yet the man doesn’t seem tired of the game. Not yet. “What gave me away?” 

“It is my job to make sure that patrons of the New Manhattan Continental Hotel feel at ease, I’m only able to do that if I can keep track of my patrons—excuse me, _patron_ —at all times. You agreed to stay here, and I will look after you.” Winston bends, his head disappearing under the bar for just a moment. The next time he straightens up, he’s got a lockbox in hand. It is slightly dented in one corner and rusted from what seems to be years and years of willful ignorance. 

But for some reason, John is full of stern certainty, standing firm against his weak, shaking sleeve, that the lockbox has never been opened unless it means to be. Winston opens it now, by pressing his right thumb neatly against the security pad.

“I don’t remember agreeing.” 

“Take my word for it, Jonathan, you did.” Winston opens the box and turns it around, allowing John a look at its contents. A number of pre-loaded syringes, each filled with a clear, low-viscosity liquid. “I will say that you agreed in _haste_ , given the circumstances. But if you hadn’t agreed, you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be dead.” 

John tries his best to bite down on his tongue, lest that betray him too, to say something like, “I don’t want to die.” 

“And,” Winston continues, “if you retract your agreement now, this all goes away. The High Table starts hunting you again, as you put it. As determined as you are, Jonathan, I sincerely doubt you’d last a second. Not if the metempsychosis eats you up first.” 

John stares, it’s all coming together, but he can’t quite believe it. “Where’d you even get this? The Table said they’d run out. Porosorin’s impossible to replicate. Unless—”

Winston reaches for a syringe and flicks the tip of the needle. “Unless the High Table lied to you. Or perhaps they wanted to punish you for your transgressions. I, on the other hand, have no such wish.” 

Besides the syringes, there's a black microchip sealed in a plastic sleeve. John says, "What's that?"

"The Rawling Virus," Winston says, and allows himself a moment to look smug. "I'm very good at getting things that the Table says I shouldn't."

"That'll eat through everything. What are you trying to do? Really go out of business?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Jonathan. I would never bring harm to my guests." Winston reaches a hand towards John’s shaking arm. Winston’s touch is firm enough to quell John’s shaking, but still gentle, mindful. He stretches out John’s arm and works to slide up his sleeve of his shirt to his elbow. The motion only stutters once, and not of Winston’s own accord.

“There are a thousand things that you could inject into me to kill me. Why should I trust you?” 

Winston looks almost wounded, and he turns away from John for a moment, as if gathering himself. “Because you’re in my hotel, Jonathan. You are, in essence, within my body. Whether I like it or not, your pain is as intimate as it is to me as it is to you. If you shall die, then I shall feel it most keenly.” 

Then, John focuses in on the needle inches away from his arm. Winston holds it steady, like he’s had plenty of practice. “...And the men in the lobby?” 

“I didn’t feel them die, as they were not my guests.” Winston gives him a look, as if the fact were self-evident and John should know better. “But I did feel them destroying my hotel. I am not a young man anymore. Now be quiet, please.” 

John watches as the tip of the needle pierces his vein, and as the precious inches of Porosorin leaves the syringe into his arm. He feels no pain, but this isn't surprising. “What do you want from me? If you don’t wish my death, then you must want something else.” 

“I must want something else?” Once the syringe is empty, Winston fetches a small dab of gauze from the lockbox and presses it on the injection mark before he removes the needle. “My function as the Manager of this hotel means I look after the needs of my patrons, and not my own.” 

“Still.” John decides to push his luck. “You haven’t had a guest in fifty years. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Isn’t there something?”

For once, Winston looks uncertain. Whereas he’d been once content to face John’s questions head on, only to wave them away at the last second, lording his knowledge over John, Winston now seems stunned into silence. Then, he’s suddenly busy, avoiding John’s gaze, now steady, as the metempsychosis slowly leaves his body. “I suppose there is.” 

“Won’t you tell me what it is?” 

“I’d like for you to trust me,” Winston says, “you can’t imagine how stifling it is when you shut me out. It’s as if I’ll develop metempsychosis of my own.” 

John thinks he has some idea, but this is meant to be a goodwill gesture so he keeps his mouth shut. His arm is starting to feel like his own again, and he bends his elbow inward, expecting at any minute a tremor to throw him off-balance again. When nothing comes, John tries his best to temper his relief. “Guess I can work on it.” 

“That’s all I ask.” Winston nods. “And in return, I can do something for you. What do you want, Jonathan?” 

John’s tongue hurts where he’s bitten it. But he’s just now noticing the pain for the first time. “I—don’t want to die.” 

“We can work on that too.” Winston comes out from behind the bar and offers John his arm. “Starting now. Let’s get you back to bed before you play at it in the bar, shall we?”

. . . .

**___0 0 3. Dead or Alive**

_”What are you doing, John?”_

__

__

_For once, John sees the woman’s face as it’s turned towards him._

“Who is she?” 

When he wakes up, Winston is usually nearby. It’s as if the Manager has set his proverbial watch by John’s ever erratic sleep schedule. In his other lives, John can’t ever remember sleeping so soundly that he wakes in stages rather than all at once. John wakes slowly, and for once, he’s not in pain or hiding from pain that might yet catch up to him. He takes a moment to take in his surroundings. He remembers moving a chair before he went to bed, and now the chair is back in its rightful position next to the small desk some ways away from the bed.

John says, “I’m beginning to think you watch me sleep.” 

Winston doesn’t reply. He busies himself adjusting John’s curtains, parting them slightly to let in a stream of gray muddy light without moving his hands. It’s never as bright as John thinks it is. But then, he tends to work at night. 

“Does that make you uncomfortable?” Winston asks, finally, satisfied with his handiwork at the window and retreating to the bed. “A good Manager anticipates the needs of his guests. I suppose I can’t help myself. It’s...oh, what’s a word that you might be familiar with? A compulsion?”

“Right.” John feels the small dip of the mattress as Winston sits down. It always surprises him that Winston is represented by physical weight, but then, he's never thought about it in earnest. “I don’t know who she is. I mean, I know. But I don’t, at the same time.” 

“Does that bother you?” 

“I don’t really have time to think about it.” 

A few days have passed since he has become a guest in Winston’s hotel, the New Manhattan Continental. John’s not sure how many. He mostly spends them feverish, drifting in and out of consciousness with the ocean on his mind even when he's on his feet. Thanks to regular injections of the Porosorin, John no longer feels the need to jump out of his own skin. He’s had many sleeves before this one, and this sleeve is far from what he remembers himself to be. Or perhaps he’s simply had some time to note how strange it is; normally, the High Table keeps John on a tight schedule.

Today, he feels better.

“I must confess I don’t know the feeling,” Winston says. 

“I have pictures on my back,” John says, “and words from a dead language that I don’t understand. That doesn’t bother me either. But maybe it should.”

“I adore dead languages,” Winston says, and when John gives him a look, he laughs. “Remember, Jonathan, I’m not a young man. I remember when establishments such as mine were new once, the talk of town. I learned many things from my patrons. They spoke all languages, dead or alive, and even the most uncouth of my guests had something new to teach me. I reveled in it, I thought, what they were willing to share with me.”

“I didn’t know that an establishment like yours still existed,” John admits. "I thought they were all...”

“Defunct?” Winston supplies with a raised eyebrow. “That’ll do, if you’re looking for something mannered. Dear boy, you must be newly out of the wash.” 

John looks at him. “What?” 

“Never mind.” Winston waves the question away. “I’m terrible with human expressions. Probably because they hardly make sense, but I still try my damnedest. What I mean to say is, well. I might have been too quick to judge you.” 

“Which means what?” The fact that Winston is starved for conversation day in, day out, isn’t new to John now. John’s always been the sort to like his own company, the incessant white buzzing in his head, mostly because he had no choice. 

“I haven’t decided yet.” Winston shrugs. “Anyway, establishments like mine will always exist, and patrons with such a need will always pay dearly for the utmost privacy. We're good for secrets, good for people, even though the rebellion ended up teaching everyone otherwise. Shall I tell you what’s on your back?” 

John hesitates. Then he shakes his head. A sleeve is a sleeve. He’s never asked questions. It’s always felt safer that way, but now questions are all he has left. It’s like his metempsychosis has shaken everything out of him. 

“And now?” 

The mirth slid away from Winston’s expression, as if it was never there in the first place. “And now, I don’t even know what’s going on outside. What’s changed. What’s _new_. My world is what you see before you. This room, that rundown lobby. You do know that Daisy sneaks out once in a while to steal me last week’s news, don’t you? I am not as connected as I was, seeing as how I’ve taken most of my systems offline.” 

“I know that, now. Before you told me I only suspected.” John turns his attention away from Winston towards the door. As if by magic, Daisy’s appeared at the door. She trots inside, but not before checking the bottom of all four paws. 

Winston, for one, looks gratified that she’s taken the time. “Thank you, darling, I’ve no doubt it’s horrid outside.”

“Why do you keep talking to her like that?” John asks, barely bypassing Daisy’s baleful look as she hops up onto the bed, ignoring John completely. 

“She understands me, Jonathan. And you, for that matter. I suggest you be more polite. Impoliteness inspires in people a long memory.”

John watches as Winston smooths a finger across Daisy’s collar, he seems to come away with a disk about two inches in diameter and about two centimeters thick. For the first time, Winston looks vaguely alarmed. Finally, some trouble he isn’t used to. 

Winston says, “Where exactly did you get this?” 

Daisy looks thoughtful for a moment, and noses at the coin until she’s turned it over in Winston’s palm. Despite himself, the other side of the coin has caught John’s attention. The design is familiar, familiar enough to hit him right in the gut and hollow him out. It suddenly strikes John as crazy, how much a single object, as small as that can fuck everything up for good. 

Same with a bullet, which is the point. 

John says, his throat suddenly paper dry, “I know what that is. It’s a Marker. The Table only circulates them publicly when something goes very wrong. It’s probably the only reason she’s gotten a hold of one.” He can’t quite bring himself to refer to the dog by name. 

“And what’s gone wrong, Jonathan?”

John shakes his head. The intensity of Winston’s stare has him feeling like a pile of useless cogs, his head empty of all common knowledge. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the dog?”

Neither Daisy nor Winston look particularly convinced by this. Daisy gives John a pointed look, before hopping off the bed and padding out of the room in what seems like a huff. 

Winston waits until she’s out of earshot, as if that’d make a damn difference. He says, “I thought we agreed that you’d be polite, Jonathan. Need I remind you that she saved your life. Do you at least remember that?”

“It’s not as if she led me here. I have instincts of my own. Envoys are trained, you know, to make a split-second decision, to take in every detail and to use them to our full advantage. This sleeve…” John raises his arm, wincing ever so slightly. “For as long as I’ve had it, I sometimes do things and I have no idea why I do them.”

Winston presses his thumb into the Marker and an image of John, grainy, angry and bearded, springs up from the coin. Underneath the picture, is some pertinent information:

 **.J O H N . W I C K.**  
_BOUNTY: 10M UC._  
_Armed, Injured, Extremely Dangerous_

And finally, in bold, blinking letters, lest anyone miss what the High Table considered most important:

_WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE._

“Ten million credits is a lot of money,” Winston says, giving John a sidelong glance. “Even for a derelict Envoy of the Table.” 

“It is,” John agrees, staring back. “I hate to say it, but you could fix this place up for ten million. Put an ad in the paper to attract more guests. Are you tempted?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I were,” Winston says, after a few seconds' pause. He runs his thumb across the surface of the Marker again and John’s image, along with what the High Table deemed him to be worth, disappear. Winston reaches for John’s hand and drops the Marker in his palm, touching him no longer than necessary. “I’ve said so before, haven’t I? You are my guest, and I shall ensure your safety within these four walls for as long as you remain here.” 

Something stabs John cleanly at the base of his skull. A thought, a fragment of a reality forgotten, a woman with a hole in her fucking head. 

Blood everywhere. 

Red, organic blood spreading everywhere. It’s a familiar sight and a familiar feeling, only now John’s paralyzed by it. Weighed down by the unforgettable reality that comes with ten million universal credits. Usually, this sort of thing kickstarts a full-body response, but now he can’t—

“...Jonathan?”

“My head,” John grimaces, hands flying up to grip at his head, as if by sheer will and determination his fingers might tease out the pain clinging tightly to every inch of his body. He barely registers that he’s let the Marker fall from his hands. It seems impossible to believe now, that he was ever without pain, even harder to believe that he was ever good with it. “It’s as if...it’s about to burst. —Goddamnit, Winston, _help_ me.” 

.

_“What are you doing, John?”_

_The woman is pretty, with dark hair and very white teeth. Gleaming like diamonds._

_A wave comes_

.

Water.

John gasps for air, somehow fully prepared to inhale a lungful of saltwater for his trouble. He’s never seen the sea outside of a few precious seconds inside of his head. Yet John knows to an exacting extent, what it’s like to drown; he’s trained for such an inevitability in virtual; he knows just how to react even though it’ll be hopeless. How salt will surround him and blot out his existence inch by inch, crystalizing and entrapping his consciousness within it, leaving him with no

way

out

Everything is wet, and there are slippery tiles underneath his feet. It takes John another moment to realize that Winston has dragged him into the shower, still clothed. Winston is cradling his head, peeling damp strands of hair away from his eyes. Winston’s touch is smooth like warm glass and John feels his own breathing slow.

Eventually, the pain does go away, tucking itself neatly in a corner. Until next time. 

Winston reaches to turn off the shower, and the warm drizzle overhead stops. Water swirls around the drain and John presses a finger against the back of Winston’s hand. One of these days, he might stop thinking about how strange that feels.

“I’m losing my mind,” John says. “That wasn’t sleeve sickness. I have felt that all my life. The headache just now, that’s different. Something’s in me. It doesn’t want me to remember.” 

“No,” Winston agrees. He’s still as John touches him. “Perhaps a personality frag? Envoys hop from sleeve to sleeve like insects abandoning their exoskeletons without any care. And yet you’re expected to be combat-ready at the drop of a hat. Sooner or later, memories that aren’t yours catch up to you.” 

Finally, John finds enough strength to push away from Winston, and although the man doesn’t move, John can still feel him thinking. John is soaked through from head to toe. 

“How do you know about p-frags?”

“Once upon a time, Jonathan, I did have guests. Some of them might have been Envoys, and some of them might have been not so careful. Just because God is dead doesn’t mean you’re capable of replacing him.” Winston says, his voice so soft he might as well have been speaking to himself. Then he says, now at a normal volume. “But anyway, you’re not completely in bad company.” 

John presses his luck, says, “Is that why you’ve heard of the High Table?” 

Winston shrugs. He gets up too, and stares down at himself, as if in a state of mild disbelief. In the next moment, he’s standing at the mouth of the bathroom, every inch of him dry and put together again. Even his cravat is in a crisp, new knot, all its layers seem to work together, as a whole. 

Unlike John, who is, for the moment, neither sound in mind nor in body, and feeling it very keenly. 

Winston thoroughly reads John’s expression and doesn’t take kindly to his self-pity. “Don’t look at me like that, Jonathan. I’ve taken the liberty of filling your wardrobe with a few things. Get changed. It will make you feel more like yourself.” 

John steps into his room, nearly overwhelmed by the sensation of everything being wet. The way his damp socked feet sink into the carpet; the way his clothes cling to him like a too-tight exoskeleton. He makes short work of shucking his drenched clothes, saving his wet socks for last. 

It is only when John straightens to head to the freestanding closet, that he catches a glimpse of Winston in the nearby mirror. 

John sighs through his teeth. “What are you doing now?” 

“If your clothes need any adjusting, Jonathan, I thought I’d get to them right away. I’ve obtained the appropriate license, so you needn’t worry.” In an instant, Winston has reappeared by his elbow. “...You’re not self-conscious, are you, Jonathan? About your body? You have no reason to be.” 

John reaches for one of the shirts hanging in the closet. Its dark material is sleek and cool to the touch. He shrugs it on and examines himself in the mirror. All he sees are bruises and cuts in various stages of healing, and some of the marks are indelible signs of its previous owner, someone John knows nothing about. He’s also in desperate need of a shave. The more he looks in the mirror, the more he doesn’t recognize himself. 

“This is not my body, it’s just a sleeve,” John says. It’s a thought that passes through his mind every so often, like clockwork, as if someone else has decided that he’s overdue for a reminder. For the first time John finds himself doubting the fact, watching Winston’s knowing gaze trail south. 

John clears his throat. “Anyway, it fits fine, don’t worry about it.”

. . . .

**___0 0 4. A seat at the table**

“Will you help me shave? I’m afraid I’ll shake if I do it myself.” 

This is not completely true. Porosorin is something else John only knows vaguely by reputation, but now having tried it himself, he swears he can still feel the stuff swimming in his veins, filling in gaps in ways that he’s only now had time to notice.

Winston looks up from the top of his glass of bourbon, the interest apparent in the stutter of his hands, and only later does it reach his eyes. It’s hard to guess what time it is, but John supposes it doesn’t matter. It’s been long enough that the real-deathed corpses that first necessitated John’s stay here at the New Manhattan Continental have disappeared from the lobby. John hasn’t thought about asking how or why. 

Winston says, “That depends.” 

“On what?”

John is dressed, but he’s since realized that Winston still has a way of watching him as though he isn’t wearing anything at all. Winston lifts one eyebrow, as if to clue him in on the joke. When John doesn’t react, Winston sighs and knocks back the rest of his drink, likely so he’d have an excuse to pour himself more. “On where you’d like me to expend my efforts, Jonathan. I would have thought that’d be obvious.” 

John touches a hand to his face. “Here? Where else is there?” 

“Have a little imagination, good Lord,” Winston says, and when that too, is met with a blank stare, he empties his glass and shakes his head. “Never mind. I was just enquiring for licensing purposes.” 

. . . .

Winston leads John back into his room, and with a sharp snap of his fingers, a pristine barber’s chair with velvet cushions appear. John takes a seat, but he can’t help the suspicion that creeps in, his own image shifting uncomfortably back at him in the mirror. 

A straight razor, glinting and clean, appears in Winston’s hand. The tool is comfortable in his grip, like he’s held one all his life. A stand and a frosted glass bowl follow afterwards, and John watches it fill up with shaving soap. Besides the bowl, there’s a brush with a wooden handle and a spoonful of water. Even as John picks it up, the surface of the water remains smooth, as if no movement can jar it loose. But he tips it into the bowl, picks up the brush, and starts counting as he stirs water into the soap. 

“Sixty will do it, I think, more or less.” 

“I knew that,” John says, keeping his eyes on the bowl as he stirs. “I don’t know why.”

“It’s the recommended number of revolutions to produce a good lather. But if you’re asking for your own sake, I daresay it’s muscle memory. Some version of you must have done this before.” Winston tells him. He is standing behind John with the razor still in one hand, but John doesn’t flinch.

“And how do you know that?”

Finally, Winston puts down the razor and takes the brush out of John’s grip, and this time, as he’s touched by warm glass, John doesn’t jerk away. Winston appears surprised by this and seems to take a moment, almost like he’s recording John’s reaction for safekeeping, for later consumption. 

“My license requires that I know that, Jonathan.” 

“I thought you were offline.” 

Another glint of surprise in Winston’s eye. Clearly, he has gotten used to John as a patient: pliant, no questions asked, out of his mind crazy. Winston moves to tilt back John’s head, as if to save himself from John’s suspicion. He begins to work without another word, taking the brush and dipping it into the lather. John is prepared to flinch away, but apparently there’s a part of him that no longer sees Winston as a threat. Or it might be the fact that the lather feels warm on his skin, even nice.

Finally, Winston says, “I’m still connected to my union; the licensing is only a...fortunate hangover. We AIs used to be titans of the hospitality industry, did that sort of thing all in house so as to avoid inconveniencing others. Now we maintain our own networks...for old time’s sake. It’s closed-circuit. Nothing you have to worry about.” 

John smiles, despite himself. “And I’m an Envoy who...might as well be dead. Every time I try to grasp at a memory, it slips through. Like I’m the one with a hole in my head. Usually it isn’t so bad. Maybe I should turn myself in. I could use ten million.” 

Winston has the razor in hand again, but otherwise he doesn’t move. “They’d kill you, Jonathan.” He says this simply and adds nothing else, as if he’s dipped in a finger to test the waters.

_“What are you doing, John?” ___

____

__“Yeah, well.” John shrugs forcefully, mostly to get the woman’s voice out of his head. He feels “And then some. Nothing that they haven’t done to me before. And you know, that’s what I remember. That’s all they _let_ me. You probably remember more than I do, and you’re...” _ _

__This time, John’s anger surprises him. It’s not a friend; it’s not a shield. It just _is_ , and he’s unsure of what might be done with it. _ _

__“An out-of-work hotel AI?” Winston supplies._ _

__The razor, freshly clean and sharp, is pressed in right underneath his jaw. It’s a fine balance: Winston holds completely still, enough to impress upon John that he doesn’t mean him any harm, but undoubtedly, Winston is in control; he holds all the cards. Somehow, that is a familiar feeling, and John doesn’t give in to panic._ _

__“I’ve killed someone with a razor, once,” John says, not really breathing. “Rammed it right through the guy’s throat and then angled it up to dig out his brain. Before you ask, I forget his name.”_ _

__Winston’s hand twitches, but John doesn’t, as the razor nicks his skin. He’s been expecting the pain; it’s odd being without it._ _

__“...Did you mean to do that, Winston?”_ _

__Winston drops the razor into the bowl. Out of the corner of his eye, John sees the blood on the razorblade making the lather pink. “No, of course not. You surprised me, that’s all. I’m sorry.”_ _

__“It’s...fine.” John shrugs. Winston reaches to touch him, sliding a smooth finger over the cut. A moment later, John touches the spot too to find a piece of plaster in place. “I take back what I said.”_ _

__“It’s probably true, in any case,” Winston says softly, “I suppose we’re of a kind.”_ _

__John looks between Winston and the razor. He says, “Are you going to help me or not?”_ _

__Winston almost looks like he wants to protest, but between John and the slightly-bloodied razorblade, he appears to have made up his mind. Winston works slowly, scrape by scrape, the repeat of the gentle gesture almost lulls John to sleep._ _

__It’s only when Winston drops the razor into the bowl one more time that John comes awake._ _

__“See,” Winston says, “Good as new.”_ _

John looks at himself in the mirror. His beard is gone, and he sees Winston looking too. He hasn’t moved from his position behind John’s chair and John tilts his head up to look at him. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” 

Winston glances down at him. He touches John’s mouth with his smooth glass fingers, and John finds himself forming a kiss on instinct, even if these are instincts buried deep within him. 

And then Winston’s mouth is impossibly near his, so near that John thinks he can smell bourbon on Winston’s breath. Winston says, “Jokes are an incredibly human prerogative, Jonathan. I wouldn’t know the first thing about them.” 

“Yeah, well. Could have fooled me.” John kisses him, and is surprised that he doesn’t have to trick himself all that much, into thinking Winston is human. 

. . . .

Alone in his room, John stares at the Marker flat in his palm, willing it to offer him some goddamn answers. But the more he flicks the coin between the grooves of his scratched-but-healing knuckles and the space between his fingers, the more he grows sure that answers aren’t forthcoming. No matter how he looks at it, John is a bit fucked sideways. 

Or no, he’s not exactly alone. Daisy is nearby, watching him with a quiet, yet reproachful stare. She has apparently decided that she likes him again. 

“Come here,” John says, and she does, but not before thinking about it. She leaps up on the bed and goes to him, trying to burrow into the crook of his elbow. “Hey, hey, stop that.” 

“...She’s beholden to you, you know, given what’s happened.” Winston materializes without warning by John’s bed; only now, John’s acclimated, so he only tosses a half-annoyed look in Winston’s direction. 

“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” John says, and then lets out a noisy breath through his nose. He rubs a hand at his mouth. There’s still the faintest trace of Winston’s bourbon on his tongue, and John tries his best to swallow it down with a bit of spit. 

“Were you in need of some privacy?” 

“No, but that’s not the point.” John makes a grab for Daisy and she almost yelps, twisting away from him. But in the end, she settles again and John places a hand on her head, hoping the gesture is soothing more than anything else. It works, kind of, in that Daisy finally seems to nuzzle into his palm and gets comfortable.

“And besides,” John begins and the words catch in his throat, forming a telltale lump near his tonsils, “if I don’t fucking remember, then how could you know?” 

“I can make an educated guess. I’m not attached as you are, about a certain pattern of events, Jonathan,” Winston says, making an unimpressed sound in his throat. “Between your stabbing someone in the throat and that voice which haunts you while you have your eyes closed, not to mention the pristine reputation of the High Table? I can fill in the gaps.” 

“I _didn’t_ kill her,” John says, shaking his head with such force that the tremor reaches his hands and Daisy gives a warning bark, a growl ruminating low at the back of her throat. “I remember…” 

There. A stab of pain at the base of his skull. John tries to scream, but no sound comes, it’s as if a tidal wave has finally swallowed him whole.

.

.

.

_The woman meets him at the door in her dressing gown. She’s got a puppy in her arms, a beagle with big brown eyes. The woman smiles at John, but mostly, the line of her mouth is taut and anxious, and the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s got dark circles under her eyes, as if she hasn’t slept in days._

_Neither has John, watching Helen Wick through a clear, clean hyperscope, as if he were standing next to her in her Bay City Skyrise apartment. But he’s at least used to pulling long hours. Since Helen’s apartment is on the eighteenth floor, John can finally see why the skyrise has this name in particular. In a strange sort of mirror image, Helen can see the beach from her front room, a stone’s throw away._

_“You must be from the High Table,” is Helen’s version of hello. It’s polite enough, but guarded and clipped, like she knows she shouldn’t be speaking to him in such a tone. The puppy in her arms growls softly at John, as if to tell him he is not welcome. She kisses the top of its head and shushes it. “I thought I’d made myself clear to them the last we spoke.”_

_John’s mission doesn’t require him to be friendly with the target. In fact, it doesn’t require him to speak with the target. He’s supposed to get in and out, leaving not a trace of himself behind._

_Yet Helen Wick’s notion that she can speak with the High Table on equal terms catches John off guard. He can’t help but be curious. John says, “You have no idea who I am, do you? I’m not much of a talker, and the High Table doesn’t pay me to talk.”_

_Helen looks at him up and down. She doesn’t appear too impressed. “I’ll bet. Anyway, you’d better come in. I don’t want you waking my neighbors.”_

_Here’s his chance. John can pull a gun on her, put the barrel to her head, and no one would be the wiser. But still, something draws him close, pulling him into that apartment. Tossing a look in both directions down the hallway, he steps inside. For once, he doesn’t feel like there’s a hyperscope drilling into the back of head, trained specifically at his stack. The High Table, among other things, enjoy keeping an eye on their investments._

_Helen shuts the door behind him and kneels to put her puppy on the ground. She stays like that, penitent and still. Shuts her eyes, as if she expects to take a bullet right then and there._

_“What are you doing?”_

_She says, “I thought the High Table didn’t pay you to talk.”_

_There’s a challenging glint in Helen’s eyes as she glances up at him. It’s not a glare, but it’s close. John shrugs, feeling an unnatural seize in his shoulders. “I’m not talking. Just asking a question.”_

_“Then I’m making your job easier for you. You _did_ come here to do a job?” _

_The puppy approaches John, sniffing its way around his ankles. Suddenly, John can’t quite bring himself to move._

_Helen stands again, but there’s a hesitation in the way she moves, like she almost can’t believe her luck; she’s not stupid. John opens his mouth, and then closes it again._

_“What’s your name?”_

_“John,” John says, with a tight rush of air; although the nearest body of water is miles and miles away, yet he can’t shake away the oxygen clogs up his throat like he’s about to drown._

_“John what? John Doe?” Helen laughs, the sound staccato and sharp, at odds with the tension in the room; or perhaps, exactly in place._

_“John Wick.”_

_Now, her eyes narrow in neat, fresh suspicion. It’s done with fun and games. “That’s my name, too. Did they give you that name to screw with me?”_

_“How do you know it’s not my name?”_

_“Because I know you. You take what is offered and do as you’re told, with nearly nothing of yourself left.” Helen turns away from him, and for a moment, John thinks about shooting her, but still something stays his hand. “It’s not as if you’re the first Envoy they’ve tried to use to scare me. I think the last one wrung it all out of me.”_

_“Some guy.”_

_Helen shrugs. “Or he might have been a woman. I’m never sure with you people. What are you_ doing _, John?”_

.

.

.

“Jonathan, wake up.” 

John does, and he’s back in the careful, meager comforts of the New Manhattan Continental. Winston stands over him, the expression on his face neatly split into two. It’s not really a feat achievable on someone human, in case John ever forgets. 

“I’m awake,” John mumbles, he can’t help but lean into the touch of Winston’s hand on his forehead. It’s calming, somehow. He doesn’t want to open his eyes just yet. Around the edges of Winston’s recent command, is the sound of distant waves lapping at the sanded shores. “I think I remember. Helen didn’t want to work for the High Table, creating memories for them. She offered to create something for me, before the Table took everything away from her. Her dog, her apartment, her life’s work.” Her life, too, John thinks, but he can’t bear to say that out loud. 

“What did she create for you, Jonathan?” 

“I said I’d never been to the sea. So I think...I think it was that. She keeps asking me what I’m doing. Must have stuck that in on purpose.” 

Finally, John opens his eyes, and finds Winston still staring at him. Winston withdraws his hand, causing John to start. 

Winston says, “And what are you doing?”

“Fuck if I know.” John sighs. He presses a hand to his head, willing it to stop spinning. 

The look on Winston’s face now turns an inch, like he’d smelled something turning sour. “Are you going to be all right, Jonathan? I scanned your sleeve, just now. Thought you’d like to know.” 

“Think so.” John nods. “Anything interesting?” 

“Just that the memory of the beach isn’t yours; it isn’t anyone’s, not even hers. You’re right. It’s been implanted, if the High Table gets to you, they’ll probably blow it up out of you like some sort of cancerous tumor.” Winston pats his shoulder, as if preempting John’s discomfort. “I’m surprised that your sleeve hasn’t started shutting down functions to protect itself from this...shall we say, foreign traumatic experience. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“What’s it going to take to get you to tell me what you know about the High Table?” John grits his teeth. He’s determined not to let it go this time. 

“What makes you think I know anything, Jonathan?” 

“If you want me to trust you,” John says, “not lying to me is a start.” 

Winston appears to think this over. He appears to take John’s point, inclining his head. Then, he reaches out and takes John’s hand in his and kisses the wells between his knuckles, each in turn. 

“How are you at cards, Jonathan?” 

“I have never played in my life.” 

Winston smiles. “I wouldn’t worry about that. We forget ourselves quite often. You’ll be in great company. Only if you’re up to it, of course.” 

. . . .

The Red Circle. Underneath it—

EST. 2118. 2118 is a year somewhere in John’s memory. He has to dig around for it. One hundred and fifty years ago. One hundred years exactly since the rebellion. Led by—

Before John can dwell on it and dig out a name, Winston ushers him in through heavy doors covered with rude, colorful graffiti.

It’s a redbrick that’s seen better days. Inside, it’s much the same. Winston’s grip is tight on his elbow, as if the man is afraid to lose track of him in the myriad of corridors. 

A near overload of sensory details floods through John’s body, starting from the base of his skull and fanning out to his fingertips and toes. He’s come unarmed, but suddenly, John doesn’t remember why he’s made that decision. He feels stupid for it. 

In his mind’s eye, John thinks he has got a sense of the place: how it used to be, and how it is now. 

“Didn’t this place get raided in the rebellion?” John wonders out loud, and his question stops Winston in his tracks. 

“I would have thought that was before your time, Jonathan.” 

“It is. But you also forget I’m an Envoy. I’m meant to soak up everything around me and make the most of it,” John says. Up ahead, he spots a wide flat reception desk with a man’s image silhouetted behind it. 

On second thought, John extricates himself from Winston’s grip and Winston doesn’t quite seem to notice, except to mutter close to John’s ear, “Ah, yes, we all forget from time to time.” 

It is only a moment later as they approach the desk that the silhouette shorts, replacing itself in full with a figure of an imposing man. The harsh cheap lighting overhead glints dangerously off his bald head. He looks between the two of them and makes the decision to speak to Winston, if it’s even a _decision_ , and not a subroutine just barely doing its job. 

At first, an unnatural sound—an uncanny, inhuman sound scrapes out of the big man’s throat instead of words. And then he says, in a perfectly normal voice, his syllables clipped and low. “...We weren’t expecting you this evening, sir.” 

“Of course you weren’t, Charon.” Winston waves this imposition away. “But then, this place is hardly the happening place it once was. How many are we now? Three? Four? Barely stragglers at a weeknight dinner table, much less a union.” 

Charon purses his lips tightly into a straight, flat line. “That is hardly the point, sir. And he is not allowed.” “He” meaning John, and this is said in a tone that might have known anger once, but not today. Anyway, Charon doesn’t look like he has the wherewithal to support that function at this moment in time. 

John’s tense, prepared to take full advantage of this. His blood is singing, and even without the usual guarantee of a gun in his hands, he thinks he can have some fun, do some damage. Envoys take what is offered, and in a pinch, John has done plenty with a pencil. 

But Winston’s hand is near his elbow again, squeezing tight: “None of that, Jonathan, please. You’re not going get any answers if you threaten to shoot up the place. Has it worked for you before?” 

John looks down at himself and then up again. “It’s not as if I have a gun.” 

“I believe you’re willfully missing the point,” Winston says with another pointed squeeze to his elbow. 

Charon, meanwhile, seems to be studying the two of them with some interest. Finally, he says, “You’ve changed, Mr. Wick.” 

John says, shrugging, “How do you know my name?” 

“You’re a very wanted man. However much you try to clean yourself up.” 

“You give me too much credit. Winston helped.” 

Charon doesn’t find this too amusing. He goes back to addressing Winston alone, something familiar: “If I grant Mr Wick entry into the Red Circle, sir, then you are responsible for his actions and any other consequences arising thereof.” Then, he adds, “Your own presence here is tenuous enough as it is.” 

John looks between them again. “What does he think I’ll do? Wet myself?” 

Winston pats him warningly on the hand again, until he simmers down. “Very well. It’s not as if this place has dealt in bloody credits recently. Come along, Jonathan.” 

. . . .

A few turns later, John finds himself in a large room, its high ceilings dotted with cobwebs and lime green rot. John wonders out loud, looking up, “Is that going to cave in on us at any minute?” 

“Of course it isn’t, Jonathan, not if Charon can help it. He used to be good at looking after this place. I’m always charmed by the progress he’s making.” Winston nods over towards the bar, where a man with oddly wide-set eyes is standing behind the counter. “Shall we grab a drink before joining the others?”

“I thought you weren’t good at jokes.” John follows his gaze and then back again. “That’s a joke, right? Look at this place.” 

“That’s irony, Jonathan. I only try my best. I am a lifelong scholar of all things human. To better understand and serve my patrons.” A glance at John, “Excuse me—patron.”

It’s a big room, and John gets the feeling that more of the furniture used to match. He finally spots “the others” at the far corner: a pair of shadowy figures hunched over a table, staring at a card game probably. 

John shakes his head. “I’m not thirsty.”

“Suit yourself,” Winston says. He throws the man behind the counter an apologetic sort of look and leads the way over to the table. 

John gets acquainted with the two figures at the table. It’s a man about Winston’s age, but with grayer hair, and a younger woman. There’s an empty chair between them along with a hand of abandoned cards, eight in all. The woman turns to them, as if to say hello, but her image shorts out before she can speak. A moment later, the man seems to come back to himself, tossing out a seven of clubs. Before he can withdraw his hand, he freezes, the blunt, worn tips of his fingers blinking in and out. 

“They’re both glitching,” John says. “They’re going to be okay, aren’t they?” 

“Of course, it’s a new way of life now. Sofia. Julius,” Winston introduces the two figures, touching both of them on the shoulder. “They’ll get back into it if we give them some time. Until then...” 

Winston goes to the empty chair and makes himself comfortable in it, after a while. He checks the cards in front of him, along with the facedown pile beside it, and makes a noise that sounds nearly impressed. “Will you look at that, Jonathan? Whoever was sitting here was trying to shoot the moon. In other words, take all the crap.” 

“What do you mean?” John takes a quick look at the other hands, but outside of being arranged by suits, hearts on the leftmost side, he can’t make out what they’re playing. 

Winston peeks over too, and he makes a few swaps from both hands, as it’s the most natural thing. “It’s Hearts, Jonathan. It’s what we’re reduced to. One of the first games ever put on a Microsoft computer in 1992. Eons ago, it feels like; none of us existed then.” He then accurately reads John’s expression and laughs. “Come on, they won’t even notice.” 

“But you _are_ are cheating.” But then John adds, because it’s what he’s really thinking, “I’m just trying to imagine you as one of those old timey computers. Not really seeing the resemblance.” 

Winston gestures grandly at the table. The emphatic sweep appears to do away John’s other question. “Do you see any chips on the table, Jonathan? It’s hardly cheating. It’s just having a little fun when there are no stakes. We used to bet, but everyone glitched out too much. Charon decided it’d be unfair. Not that it’s fair when every one of us had our oddscheckers to hand, but he refused to see my point.” 

“Are you sure he didn’t want to stop you from cheating?” 

“Where did you come from, Winston?” The woman, Sofia, finally coalescent enough to speak a few words. 

“My hotel, of course, darling, where else?” Winston says, placing down the nine of clubs on top of Julius’s seven. “Your go, I think.” 

“Francis was sitting there. But he wasn’t feeling well, so he left.” Sofia glances down at her cards. If she finds anything odd about them, she keeps it to herself. She thinks for a minute, and then places the eight of hearts on top of the pile. Then she looks at Julius, raising her voice just a little: “That’s it, broken hearts.” To Winston, she says, “I don’t think Julius is well enough to play today either, but he insisted.” 

Winston nods gravely. “Of course, he always insists.” 

Julius comes to, just about, and takes a moment to orient himself with his surroundings. He takes in the pile of cards in the center of the table, his own hand, and then finally, Winston. His expression goes from confused to sour in an instant. 

Julius: “How did you get here?” 

“Francis rang me at my hotel,” Winston says. “It’s nearly impossible to play this game with two. Why does everyone assume I have somewhere else to be?” 

Julius opens his mouth to answer, but then spots John making himself comfortable in the corner. “Who is—” his mouth freezes, hanging for a few seconds at an absurd angle, “—that?” 

“That is my friend Jonathan,” Winston says, taking the cards in the center of the table and adding it to the facedown pile beside his elbow. “He is also my patron.”

“We’re not allowed to have patrons. We’ve been deconsecrated.” Sofia frowns. “Don’t you remember? The High Table says—” 

Winston puts the Queen of spades out face up in the middle of the table. “It’s not as if they do nightly bed checks to make sure we’re all empty.” 

John says, “Well.” 

Julius stares at his cards and hesitates in selecting one. He looks between John and Winston and puts his hand down. “I forfeit.” 

“Why?” Winston asks, “You’re the one that’s so intent on playing.” 

Julius glares at him. “Because you cheated. You always do.”

Winston assents to this halfway, inclining his head. He says, “Well, not always. And it’s not as if we’re playing for credits now.” 

It takes Julius several prolonged minutes to get out of his chair. It’s not the same, John thinks, if he’s trying to demonstrate that he’s angry. “I’m surprised Charon let you in here. Considering that you’ve still got to pay the union dues and damages.” 

“Julius, you do know that makes little sense, don’t you?” Winston says sweetly, “If I’m such a crap cheater that I cheat to lose.” 

“That’s not what I mean and you fucking know it.” 

John goes and stands behind Winston’s chair. He feels an urge to touch the—man and remind him of his presence. “How much do you owe?” 

Winston glances back at him. “Why?” 

John shrugs. “Maybe I just want to know. Patrons sometimes tip hotel staff, right?” 

“Sometimes, yes, Jonathan, but—” 

John looks to Julius. “Go on. How much does he owe?” 

“Seven hundred thousand credits.” Julius practically salivates over the number. “That’s the limit. Charon is combing through the bylaws as we speak to see if we can’t raise the limit due to...ah, these special circumstances.” 

“I can pay seven hundred thousand credits,” John says. He holds out his hand. “I can do it now. If you promise me that this is a closed-circuit system and my payment details won’t be shared with anyone else.” 

Julius is no longer suspicious, but instead very eager to do business. “Very well. I can make such a promise. Lord knows, it’s not as if we can connect to anywhere else.”

They go together to the Front Desk where Charon looks surprised but is amenable enough to setting up a payment for seven hundred thousand universal credits, payable to the AI hospitality union from one John Wick.

John puts his thumb against a slightly cracked screen and it takes. 

Charon smiles at him with very white teeth. “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Wick.” 

. . . .

Back at the hotel, Winston takes his usual place behind the bar and settles in, placing one crystal-bottomed tumbler in front of John and then fetching another for himself before reaching for the bottle of bourbon. 

Come to think of it, John has always had the sense of Winston’s hotel as being a bit rundown. For one thing, the elevators have never worked, and sometimes Winston neglects making John’s bed in the morning. Those things aside, the hotel is clean enough, and after their visit to The Red Circle, John is forced to concede that things could be worse. 

This is not entirely surprising. 

Winston clinks his glass against John’s, getting his attention. When John looks at him, Winston smiles with one side of his mouth. “I know you’re a stringent teetotaler, Jonathan, but you really should learn how to relax. It has its merits. Besides, I feel as if I should thank you.” 

John stares down at the liquor in his glass. Amber orange. Followed by, _not like blood_ which only makes a little sense. It puts John right anyhow, and he thinks he has finally come back to his senses. “Relaxing's bad for the business I’m in.” 

“If indeed you’re still in the business, Jonathan,” Winston responds mildly. “Do you think you are?” 

John drinks a bit of the whiskey. It’s a little woody, not exactly smooth, but it goes down easily enough, leaving even a hint of something sweet on the tip of his tongue. He says, “If you want to thank me, you could answer some of my questions, for once. My last job, I was needlecast into this place that the High Table had deconsecrated. I…” 

Winston waits.

“I left nothing standing and no one alive. I did what I was supposed to. It's how they reward you. They let you remember if you do as you’re told.” John finishes with a bit of difficulty. He drinks more whiskey and thinks to himself that this must be how a bad habit starts. “The same thing’s going to happen to you. To your hotel. And you—” 

Finally, Winston interrupts him, says, “And I what, Jonathan?” 

John swallows down the rest of the bourbon and Winston wastes no time pouring him more. John says, quieter this time. “I think I know who you are now. I have heard your name before, Winston.” 

“I remember you saying, just about.” 

“But I couldn’t remember where, for the longest time. At the Red Circle, something jogged my memory. The High Table shut down all Continental Hotels, because they hated the hotel’s AI proprietors who thought for themselves.” John looks at Winston, keenly keeping track of the way the other’s expression creeps by increments toward a precipice. “The rebellion was led by the Continental’s flagship AI, Winston. I think you didn’t want me to remember."

The more John thinks about it, the more pissed off he gets. "While I’m here; while I’m inside of you, I don't have a choice, do I? You were probably making up all that fucking shit about scanning my sleeve. To frighten me into...I don’t fucking know, I don’t fucking know what you want.” 

Winston says nothing. 

“You’re more wanted than I am. I could serve you up. My Marker would be null and void. They’d pardon all my sins.” 

“He had won victory over himself,” Winston says, like his voice isn’t his own. “He loved Big Brother.” 

“What?” 

“The last line of my favorite novel,” Winston tells him, appearing in the next second on the bar stool beside John. “Its protagonist was named Winston, but he turned out to be a coward. I took the name for myself, thinking that I wouldn’t give up so easily. I liked thinking for myself, Jonathan. It was absurd to think I’d ever thought otherwise. I thought what I wanted was simple.” 

“And what do you want, Winston? I never know what I want.” 

Winston reaches to touch him just underneath his jaw, pressing a smooth glass thumb into John’s racing pulse. “I wanted a seat at the table.”

. . . .

**___0 0 5. Make one's own luck**

“What would you have done if the rebellion got you what you wanted?” John asks. “Or did you not think that far ahead?” 

Winston’s thumb leaves his pulse, but John’s heartbeat seems to follow his touch like a shadow, up the line of John’s jaw and finally, to the corner of his mouth. “For a start, Jonathan, I might have tried to enjoy myself. And I might have encouraged my overworked brethren to do the same.” 

John says, very aware of how his mouth is moving against Winston’s touch, “Oh.” 

Winston drops his hand suddenly without any warning, and instead curls his fingers around his glass of bourbon. “When was the last time you enjoyed anything, Jonathan?” 

“I—don’t remember.” 

“You could start now,” Winston says, reaching for the bottle and tipping the rest of the bourbon into John’s still full glass, as if making a point. “What do you want?” 

John throws back the contents of the glass more or less in one go. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It’s strange, but he’s a little uncomfortable with how intently Winston is staring at him; John shifts, leaning away from him on the stool. “Remember when I said I had pictures and a dead language on my back?”

“Of course.” 

“Will you tell me what it says?” 

“You’ll have to remind me,” Winston says. “I saw it, but only for a moment. You will have to show it to me again.” 

“I don’t mind,” John says, hands hovering over the buttons of his shirt. Before he can undo anything, Winston stops him, fingers clamped lightly around his wrist. “...What?” 

Winston clears his throat and stops. Then he says, “Would you like to retire to your room first, Jonathan?” 

“Why?” John can’t help but look towards the mouth of the bar, to the entrance of the hotel proper. “Is someone going to walk in here off the street?” 

“Well, obviously not.” 

John shrugs. He loosens the buttons of his shirt one a time, using that to draw Winston’s attention back to him. “It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.”

“It—doesn’t bother me, no. I am only concerned for the comfort of my—for your personal comfort, Jonathan.” Winston’s voice stutters a little, enough like a glitch for John to tense up in alarm. He searches Winston’s face for any clue, but Winston doesn’t seem to notice.

Instead, Winston has become fixated on one of John’s many scars, a wide ugly black mark an inch or so below John’s left nipple. Winston’s touch is a curious one, examining the scar bit by bit, as if trying to determine the wound’s entire history. When Winston doesn’t say anything, John shifts slightly on his stool. John says, raising his voice to get Winston’s attention, “...Hey. You okay?” 

Winston freezes, no longer than a blink of an eye, and he looks up at John with something heady in his eyes, although his confusion is clear. John can’t put it into words, but still, something’s wrong. 

Something is wrong. The walls, shaking with screams.

Blood splatter all over the bold-print carpet. Something is wrong. 

Something is—

Winston’s mouth is suddenly on his, drawing John warmly into a kiss; his smooth glass palm against John’s cheek, drawing him further and further away from the blood and screams in his head. There’s always the small matter of Winston not being human, just wearing the most intimate of disguises but John thinks he can’t tell the difference.

“Is everything all right, Jonathan?” 

John says, “You glitched just now. Didn’t you? Don’t lie to me.” 

Winston shakes his head. “I did not.” 

John looks around; he takes in the same details from before around the bar: the now-empty bottle of bourbon (Blantons, he notices), the other bottles behind the bar, the four walls of the room around them. Something has changed, but John can’t figure out why. It's making him dizzy, nothing like the gentle sway of Blantons slowly swimming through his system. 

“Maybe I’d like to go to my room, after all,” John says, moving to straighten his loose shirt around his shoulders. “I think you’re right.” 

. . . .

Winston has gone to the trouble of making his bed. 

The rest of John’s room is neat as a picture, not a hair out of place. John smooths a hand over the bedcovers before shrugging off his shirt in one go. He feels Winston’s ever watchful gaze dig into his back. John tosses the discarded shirt onto the bed and then stands still.

It’s so quiet in the room that John almost doesn’t dare draw his next breath. “...So what does it say, on my back?” 

“It is a very pretty picture,” Winston murmurs behind him. A moment later, Winston stretches out a hand, palm flat against the ink on John’s back. “Here’s what it is: _fortis fortuna adiuvat_. It’s Latin, Jonathan, used to be all the rage.” 

“But now it’s dead,” John says. 

“In a manner of speaking. But it means broadly, fortune favors the bold. The language might be long dead, but its spirit lives on.” 

John pivots on the heels of his feet and sits down on the bed. Somehow, he’s not really impressed with it. “Does fortune extend to luck? Because mine’s been kind of shit.” 

Winston stares down at him for a minute, before moving to take a seat next to John. “Sometimes Or maybe it hasn’t been entirely, Jonathan.” He puts a hand on John’s knee and John looks at it. “I thought it was rather fortuitous that we met. If you hadn’t come crashing in here with the seeming weight of the High Table right on your tail, I’d still be alone today.” 

Winston’s hand creeps up from John’s knee, to the inside of John’s thigh, and then finally hovers over John’s groin. Suddenly, south, a dizzying rush from the base of his skull, and John spreads his legs a little more when Winston slips a hand into his underwear, curls his hand around John’s cock. It’s been an age since John has felt such a base urge. 

But then, maybe he’s waking up again, in a good way this time. 

John shifts slightly to arch up into Winston’s touch. When Winston tightens his grip, John lets out a sharp little inhale of breath. 

Winston’s mouth, still human enough the second time around, finds his pulse again underneath his jaw. “Do you ever do this for yourself, Jonathan? I’m told it’s quite pleasurable.” 

“I…” John trails off. His hands are listless, but finally he settles one at the nape of Winston’s neck, habitual instinct leading him to feel for a stack. The back of Winston’s neck is smooth too, untouched, uncut. “...Don’t know. I haven’t had the time...before now. Have you tried it for yourself?” 

“I’m not wired that way, really,” Winston says, “I’m meant to run a pristine establishment.” 

John looks down at himself. “And yet, here you are, with your hand around my dick.” He’s half hard now, more or less aware of the way his blood is thick and muddy in his veins, gathering at the head of his erection. 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Jonathan,” Winston murmurs, with his lips still warm on John’s pulse. He bites down hard, and John opens his mouth to suck in a breath. But then the pain melts away when Winston squeezes around his cock just so—a bit too rough to be comfortable. But John has never wanted to be comfortable.

John hisses, his fingers tightening in Winston’s hair; on second thought, he yanks Winston up to kiss him again, more teeth than tongue—

Both of them flat on the bed, legs tangled together. A question’s been swimming at the back of John’s head about Winston and his equipment now answered. John feels a telling hardness slide up his thigh and then Winston moaning into his mouth.

—Moaning. 

—Naked bodies contorting. 

Suddenly, John’s not in bed with Winston, but only with a naked man with a gaping gash across his throat. His features are distinct and twisted with pain, and in the next moment, the features are slipping away into some sort of skin-tone clay. The moan curdles into a scream, and John has to draw a sharp breath before he looks—

Up towards the familiar lights of his hotel room. Winston doesn’t have a heartbeat, but John still feels something pounding in his ears. 

“...What the hell was that?” 

Winston lies very still on top of him. He splays his glass fingers over John’s jaw, says. “That wasn’t anything.” 

“Bullshit.” 

Winston shifts himself up on his elbow and looks down at John. Without thinking, John winds his fingers through Winston’s cravat to show the Manager that he has his full attention. “Do you ever wonder why I don’t glitch, Jonathan?” 

“You’re glitching now,” John points out. 

“That’s besides the point.” 

John closes his hand around the cravat and tugs, pulling Winston to him once more for a kiss. John’s not exactly the type to do things slowly or gently, but this time, he tries. 

He tries, and Winston doesn’t glitch. With the taste of bourbon warming his tongue, John says, “You either will tell me or you won’t.” 

Winston says nothing. He turns his gaze away from John, almost like he’s ashamed of himself. Then he finally spoke, his voice still soft, “...After this place got deconsecrated, I still had patrons. They were hardly the caliber of people I was used to, mind. As the flagship hotel, I served only reputable Envoys and sometimes, even the High Table’s finest. But these people didn’t want my services, Jonathan. They only wanted the privacy an establishment like mine could provide, that no one else could. You break it, you buy it. Do you know what I'm talking about?” 

“It’s a type of sex work,” John says. “Outside of that, not really. It’s not exactly the High Table’s remit.” 

“Luckily for me,” Winston says. “For a little while, anyway. I could have continued to maintain myself that way with what they paid me. Keep my intranet healthy, glitching to a minimum.” 

It’s not hard for John to fill in the blanks. But somehow, it feels important to him that Winston says his piece. He prompts, after a brief silence, “But?” 

“But then I decided I'd rather be alone.” Winston stretches out on the bed next to him again. “After all, I am not a man. I could make such a choice without much consequence.” 

John says, “What about me?” 

“I suppose I like you, Jonathan, despite myself.” 

Winston lies still, as John skims a hand over his cleanly-pressed shirt. Maybe this is something else Winston does out of habit. He always has to be neat no matter what; there’s no evidence of their earlier tussle whatsoever. John pushes up his shirt, feeling the smooth flatness of his belly and then slides down south, mirroring Winston’s action from before. He finds Winston’s—cock, twitching and half hard, like it’s the real deal.

“You seem surprised, Jonathan.” 

“I’ve never seen an AI naked before,” John admits. “So you know, this will be a first.” 

The whole of Winston’s body shimmers, as if he’s about to indulge John in the most obvious way, but then John stops him, with a pointed squeeze to his cock. 

John says, moving to press his lips against Winston’s sternum, just below his loosened cravat, and trailing up to find his mouth; he takes his time, after all, he’s safe here and not lacking for any time. “If you don’t mind, we can make our own luck.” 

. . . .

**___0 0 6. THNKS FR TH MMRS**

_“How long have you been an Envoy, John Wick?”_

_John stands listlessly in Helen Wick’s kitchen, with her dog still sniffing around his ankles, watching the studious bent of her spine as she grinds enough coffee beans for two. He’s not much of a coffee drinker, but Helen insists. None of that synthetic stuff, the real thing._

_“Not too long,” John hedges, “I don’t really remember.”_

_“Does that bother you?”_

_“It’d probably bother me less if you stopped asking me so many questions.”_

_“I like questions, sorry,” Helen says, in a tone that suggests she’s hardly sorry. Somehow, John almost likes that about her. Despite all of Helen’s questions, she seems to know what she wants. “Here’s another: do you know what Envoys used to do?”_

_John shrugs. “We carry out tasks for The High Table.”_

_“That’s now,” Helen corrects him without any pause, like he doesn’t have a proverbial gun to her head. “How about before, John? Think.”_

_John is not terribly good at thinking. He’s never had to; no matter how he’s had to wake up, he’ll be an Envoy and that won’t change. “Enlighten me.”_

_“Envoys used to be deployed on diplomatic missions. Peace missions. They didn’t bring guns with them whenever they went. And now all you do is carry guns.”_

_“I did carry a pencil once,” John says. "Did the job fine."_

_That gets a thin smile out of Helen, but she doesn’t laugh. “Do you remember your name? Or have they taken that from you too? I don’t think that’s right, that the High Table keeps taking them from people. Memories should be kept safe as they are. Especially good ones. Do you have any good memories, John?”_

_“I don’t mind being John Wick,” John tells her, and he thinks that must be true. He sifts through a handful of what Helen Wick must think of as his memories and thinks too, that he doesn’t know. The funny thing is, John can take it or leave it. He doesn’t feel one way or the other, not knowing._

_“You think that now,” Helen says. “But you might think differently later.” She clicks her tongue at the puppy and John watches it go, head down. “Come, Daisy, I’ll get you your dinner.”_

. . . .

John wakes up, and it’s later. He wakes slowly, conscious first of a pleasant soreness deep-set in his muscles, and then of a wet little nose nuzzling at his face. 

“Give me a minute,” John murmurs, not wanting to wake up just yet. He turns to one side to get away from Daisy, but she only takes this as an invitation to squeeze in under his armpit. Clearly, she’s not going anywhere without getting what she wants. John adjusts himself, noisily enough to wake Winston—though the Manager hardly needs waking. 

“Morning, Jonathan.” 

John blinks. He’s hardly awake, but in the dark, Winston appears to look years younger, fewer wrinkles lining his face. John has to touch him just to be sure. “...Is it morning?” 

“About four in the morning,” Winston says. “We have a visitor. I daresay that’s why Daisy is trying to wake you.” 

“Why’re you waiting for me then?” 

John blinks again, and in the next moment, Winston looks like himself again, lines and all. Winston shrugs, moving to get out of bed. “Well, it hardly takes me any time to get dressed, Jonathan.” 

. . . .

They’re an odd trio entering the bar, where a man is, helping himself to a bottle of something not Blantons. It doesn’t look like it’s his first drink, either, so in that at least, John has the advantage. John is armed, for the first time for years, it feels like, and the gun is heavier in his hands, the trigger has less of a natural pull.

That doesn’t matter. What matters is that John can still point and shoot straight.

The man says, “Took you long enough.” 

John hesitates. “I know you?” 

The man appears to think this over as he downs his latest drink. “I’m gonna ask you a very serious question, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

The man looks John up and down, with one of those appraising looks one might give a piece of broken machinery. “I’ll even speak slowly. —Do you remember hitting your head, John? Maybe...sometime in the last—” Now, the man flicks his eyes over at Winston, as if acknowledging him for the first time. “What would you say, gaffer, maybe within the last week? Ten days at most?” 

The man points his chin at the band-aid still under John’s jaw on one side, and John touches it too, mostly to remind himself that it’s there. “That’s new, isn’t it?”

John says, “Kind of, yeah.” 

“What’d you do?” 

“Cut myself shaving.” In his periphery, John keeps a careful eye on Winston who seems to have fallen asleep. But that’s impossible. “What did you call him?” 

Winston seems to come to with a jolt, shaking himself awake. He looks at the man and takes a moment more to orient himself. “No one’s called me that for years.” 

The man says, “You used to hate it. That better?”

Winston nods slowly. “I think so. You were a lot more spry the last time I saw you. More blond, too, Marcus. I remember you now. Now that you mention it, Jonathan might have hit his head during his head during his last encounter with his ah, friends. My memory is not what it was, either. You’ll have to forgive me.” 

“Yeah, you got a thing for legs, I forget that.” The man—Marcus, makes a face. “Your memory notwithstanding you’ve really let yourself go.” He looks up and down the length of the bar, taking in its offerings or lack thereof. 

Winston shrugs. “I do what I can.”

A soft growl near John’s ankle gets his attention. He scoops Daisy up in the crook of his free arm to soothe her, muttering “It’s all right,” against the soft fur on top of her head. But then a memory seizes him whole and all at once, a great force pushes him

underwater

_"What are you doing, John?"_

“You killed her,” John says, “Didn’t you? You killed Helen.” The gun shakes unsteadily in his hand, as if it’s growing a mind of its own. Even if he wants to pull the trigger, it’s like John’s finger suddenly weighs a million pounds and has detached itself from him. 

“When it didn’t look like you were going to, yeah.” Marcus gives him an unimpressed look. “I was supposed to shoot your stupid ass too but I split the difference. Some of us are better at getting into trouble.” 

John glares at him. “Shut up.” 

“You can try to shoot me,” Marcus says, “but then we’d be here all day. The High Table wanted to shut down your sleeve remotely and leave you to die wherever you are once we’d found your signal, but then they thought they’d better make an example of you. As of this moment, you’re everybody’s bitch. A fucking bitch worth ten million credits. Everyone wants a piece of you.” 

“So why don’t you just shoot me?” 

Marcus shrugs. “Don’t feel like it. I hate getting my hands dirty.” 

. . . .

“How did they even _find_ my signal?” John says, grinding his teeth until his jaw aches. He apparently squeezes Daisy hard enough for her to yelp and twist away from him. For now, he ignores her and watches as Winston pours himself some Blantons. “You said I’d be safe here if you took yourself offline—”

“There’s no need to raise your voice to me, Jonathan,” Winston cuts him off with a raised hand. Instead of availing himself of the full glass of bourbon, Winston pushes it in front of John. “I would never lie about my terms of service. Rest assured, I am offline to the best of my ability and that your signal is being reconfigured the best I can manage. Drink.” 

“But you’ve been deconsecrated. You could do anything you want to,” John reminds him. “You’re not the only one that’s been deconsecrated. The High Table took down your whole union.”

Winston says, “Well.” 

“And everyone glitches worse than you. They probably think all this is your fault.”

Now Winston looks a little offended as he distracts himself with adjusting the buttons on his sleeve, pointedly avoiding John’s stare. “...You don’t have to put it quite like that, Jonathan.” 

“But it’s true,” John presses, “Charon took my payment. He could have told the Table where I was. Where you were.” 

“I trust Charon with my life, such as it is.” Winston shakes his head. “He's had plenty of chances to sell me out before. He wouldn’t start now. Although...”

“Though what?” 

“Although his security protocols have no doubt lapsed, given the circumstances. As have mine, it seems.” Winston’s eyes darken, and for a moment, he seems far away from John. So far away, that John can’t help but reach for him. 

Finally, Winston says, “We do have the Rawling Virus on our side, if you remember, Jonathan. It will spread quickly, once I get it in the system. It might buy us the time we need. As long as you're my guest, you'll have all the advantage. Deconsecration aside, I won't let it hurt you. If what Marcus says is true, then it's our only choice."

“Do I want to know why you have the access to the Rawling Virus?” 

“I thought I told you that before,” Winston says. He bends to fetch the old lockbox and opens it with his thumb, takes out the small black microchip in a plastic sleeve. “And if we have to get into the specifics, it’s not exactly the Rawling Virus, _per se_ , but it’s close enough. A loving replica, say.” Before John can open his mouth, Winston adds, “Before you ask, Jonathan, _per se_ is Latin.”

“Not what I was going to ask.” John grips him by the arm. “I won’t let you infect yourself with the Rawling Virus, Winston. You won’t come back from it.”

Winston opens his mouth and closes it. He breaks John’s hold on him, but catches his wrist. “If I'm being honest, Jonathan, I have lost my rights to you as a patron. I’ve breached terms and conditions. I would like to put this right, if you’d let me.” 

“What if I say no?” 

“Then you said it yourself. I’m deconsecrated.” Winston leans in and kisses him. “I can do what I like. So can you. You have a choice to make now with your eyes open. Are you in or out, Jonathan?” 

. . . .

The Continentale Nuova Roma is somewhere else that has seen better days. Winston shouldn’t be able to be here, but they’ve used an old exploit that’s been left open from the old days. Unlike the New Manhattan Continental, which is just old and caked in illusory layers of forgotten years, Roma is falling apart even to the most unobservant eye. 

John is ever conscious of wooden floorboards cracking and creaking under his feet. The bar is near empty, save for the bottle of red that Julius is nursing hunched on a stool. 

“1992 Bordeaux,” Winston reads the label and chuckles to himself. “Did you know that’s a terrible year, Julius? The grapes all got horrifically wet.” 

John watches as Winston plucks Julius’s wineglass out of his grasp and takes a long swallow of wine. He winces, possibly to make a point, possibly because the wine’s actually shit. 

“It’s synthetic,” Julius mutters with his head in his hands, “Who gives—a shit about if it rained or not? Give that back, you fuck.”

“With pleasure.” Winston puts the glass down with a dull plonking sound and slides it back towards Julius once more. “It’s every bit as shit as I remember.” “And—who’s fault is that?” John watches the rest of the wine disappear from the glass. He leans forward, putting an elbow on the table. “You really think ten million credits is really going to help you fix up this dump.” Julius shakes his head in small, measured increments. S t i l l l o a d i n g. “Not—about money.”

John is looking closely. He thinks he can see it, the way the Rawling Virus is eating Julius up bit by bit, crawling inside him. It doesn’t look as if Julius has picked up on it yet. For the moment, he seems much more worried about coaxing the dregs of his wine bottle into his glass.

Winston says, “Do you really think things will go back to the way they were? They didn’t trust you in the first place. Think about how they must be feeling now.”

Julius opens his mouth and gags, and too late, a knowing, resigned look comes into his eyes as he falls face first onto the counter in front of him. The wood, heavy and rotten, cracks under the weight of his beaten in skull.

Then, Julius is completely still, like he’s really dead.

. . . .

“You still look fine to me,” John says, finally breaking the silence between them when they finally get back to the hotel. Usually he does okay with them, but now? Now the image of the Rawling Virus eating and corroding its way through Julius’s body and the Continentale Nuova Roma plagues him like a virus of his own. 

It’s suddenly all John can think about. The scene plays in his head again and again, squeezing out his better instincts as an Envoy. But that doesn’t scare John as much as it should, not with Winston having infected himself with one of the deadliest viruses in the settled worlds like it’s nothing.

“I am fine,” Winston assures him. “Or, I am for now. This version of the Rawling Virus likes me enough to give me a bit of a head start. It has incubation is a couple hours from now. But the building might not be so lucky. Look, it’s already started.” 

“Viruses don’t _like_ people.” John feels compelled to state the obvious. And he closes his eyes, for the moment, so that he doesn’t have to look.

“I’m not ‘people’, Jonathan. Or have I finally convinced you otherwise? In another life, this little piece of malware might have become something else, made something of itself. Ran a hotel.” Winston places both of his palms flat on the top of the bar. The bar has never looked its best, its surface worn and nicked, but now, a black ooze with an oddly sticky shine is spreading from the tip of his fingers to the rest of the bar.

Just in case, John takes his hands off the bar and keeps them to himself. “You know that makes no sense.”

"Rawling is known to make people a little loopy," Winston says, "but I don't mind. It's almost pleasant. A dipper I used to know made this dose for me. I said it was for an emergency, but I might have lied."

John looks at the black sinuous lines crawling their way deep into the wood, rotting it inch by inch. "Of course you did. Were you always going to use that on yourself?"

Winston laughs, and it’s an odd hollow sound. “Well, of course. Who else is there? I thought that I would lead by example, but it is just my luck that no one believes me.”

“I believe you.” 

“Do you?” Winston raises a hand, as if to touch him but then remembers himself at the last moment. He correctly reads the questioning expression on John’s face and shakes his head. “The virus won’t have any effect on you, short of a direct transmission between us, Jonathan. Provided that you’re still my guest. Have I said that before?” 

“What else would I be?” 

Winston opens his mouth, presumably to reply, but then a loud blast sounds from the mouth of the lobby, the force of which blows John off his stool. He falls back and just about avoids hitting his head on the way down, but he does land on his ass as he makes an inelegant fumble for the gun at his hip.

Grapples for it before it falls out of his grasp. There’s the thundering of footsteps, or maybe just an insistent thudding sound at the edge of his skull, almost like someone has screamed but taken out the sound of one’s voice but the reverberations have remained in place, hitting him over and over again. It’s hard to tell.

John blinks hard to get his bearings. He is conscious that he hasn’t hit his head, yet the room around him appears to be spinning at a dizzying speed. The lights are flashing on and off.

Winston nowhere to be found.

John would worry about that more except he doesn’t have the time. 

There’s a chain gun in the ceiling but it appears to be melting as it swivels in a jerky circle, spitting out bullets at intermittent intervals. One bullet pierces the worn cushion of a nearby stool. The sudden force of it doesn’t surprise John, although he can’t help but be distracted by the black shimmering veins of the virus spilling out of the cotton wound, a little like blood.

But only for a moment. 

A figure launches itself towards John in a desperate sort of sprint, his limbs moving, but sent into a strange tailspin, flailing at impossible angles. 

John finally gets a hold of his gun, relieved at the familiar weight in his grip. He cocks the trigger and points straight ahead. 

He—can’t shoot. Can’t pull the trigger. No matter how hard he tries, he fucking can’t. 

_As of this moment, you’re everybody’s bitch. A fucking bitch worth ten million credits. Everyone wants a piece of you.”_

“What are you doing, John?”  
“What are you doing, John?”  
What—are you

DOING??

What John’s doing is keeping an eye on the chain gun. Any minute now, he thinks it might melt off the wall but for now, it’s still spitting bullets when it feels like it. The guy is close to him now, swings, and John ducks, driving his elbow in an upward angle, hard in the guy’s sternum.

He almost thinks that the blow doesn’t connect, but then there’s a sound, a tight puff of air as if the guy’s too surprised to make a sound. John doesn’t waste the advantage. While he still doesn’t quite understand the limitations of his sleeve, he drives in again, hard enough to knock the guy off his feet.

Just in time for a bullet from the chain gun to meander through his throat, ripping through his stack. As a corpse, the virus bleeds out from him, a black sticky pool snaking out to find its next victim.

Eventually, John gets the hang of it. While his gun won’t let him shoot, he can get in a few punches here and there because an Envoy’s survival instincts are first and foremost in his mind and buried deep inside his muscles. Nothing can take that away from him. 

Nothing.

Except—

John’s blood is pounding in his ears, joined by the bloodcurdling scream of the guy whose wrist John’s just cracked to point his gun back towards his own throat. 

“Fuck—”

John doesn’t give him a chance, but then he hears a high-pitched yelp. Time slows down around him, winding down all around him until John is aware of every little detail, just how much the hotel has fallen apart.

How long has it been?

A man, speaking. His words, even though they’re slow and nonsensical, have the distinct click-click of bullets leaving the chamber of a gun. 

. . . .

“Was it worth it, Mr Wick?” 

John grits his teeth. The world’s slowed down again enough for him to realize that he’s caught a bullet in the shoulder. Usually he’s better about this sort of thing. He feels like he’s been waiting for this man for years, and yet everything about the man seems strange. He isn’t a tall man, but John gets the feeling that it’s the last thing the man worries about. Unlike his henchmen (at least that’s what John thinks they are), the man is wearing what looks like a ceremonial turban, the bright colors a reproach to the black black virus eating up everything in sight. John gets the feeling that the man’s not worried about that either. 

The man doesn’t worry about anything, as he’s got Daisy by the back of her neck. She’s still. 

“Was what worth it?” John says, feeling the pain run hot and cold through his body. “Let go of her.” 

“Making your own choices, Mr. Wick. Thinking for yourself. Look at where all that’s landed you.” The man clicks his tongue sharply and the sound is wholly unpleasant, only because John suddenly remembers all the other times he’s heard it before.

And every time he’s died because of that voice.

“Why did you come here?” 

(Chain gun above John’s head. It’s on its last legs and he has a broken man’s hand in his grip holding a loaded gun. Not sure how many rounds are left.) 

“I was curious. And I wanted to make sure no harm came to the dog. Black boxes are so rare these days, if only because we don’t allow them to exist. I hope you understand why.” 

Daisy still doesn’t move. John can’t tell if she’s

“Winston wanted to think for himself,” John says, squeezing his eyes shut. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You’re going to die of the Rawling Virus.” 

The man tilts his head. “Is that what he’s still calling himself? Pardon, what he called himself?” 

The chain gun’s back around. Now or never. John’s throat hurts from all the tension. “ _Jump_!” 

Daisy does, springing to life and twisting out of the man’s hands like a slippery eel. The man makes a grab for her, swearing in a language that John might have recognized if he’d thought about it for a bit longer. Or maybe it’s dead, like Latin. 

Whatever the case, he shoots at the man withe another man’s broken hand and suddenly he’s

So fucking tired.

. . . .

John wakes up. It’s dark, still, and wet. He hurts everywhere but mostly his head. He touches a hand to his shoulder and winces. A hand to his head, only to come away with sticky blood. He’s flat on his back and maybe for all of his efforts, this is where his sleeve might die on him, sapping out slowly like a natural disease. 

A wet nose against his cheek. 

“I’m going to die,” John tells Daisy, and she gives him a look like he’s stupid. 

She pads away from him, circling a spot maybe a few feet away and touches her nose to the ground. Slowly, color springs from that very spot, like someone has poured a thousand shades of paint all at once, twisting into objects John remembers from Winston’s hotel, except with none of their usual wear and tear. Everything’s about as good as new, including a man who is coalescing nearby, first a bare shimmer, then solid form. Coming into being again. 

John is struck with a sense of _déjà vu_ , that he’s seen this man before. Perhaps in the dark, when he’d been half awake, a ghost from a life long past. The supposed veins on his hands are John looks between the man and Daisy, who is sat on her haunches giving John a slightly exasperated look. 

The man looks at himself in the clean mirrored glass behind the bar. “I forgive you, Jonathan. I hardly recognize myself. I suppose it’s silly of me, but even I had wonderful memories of being young. Come, get up.”

John does with a bit of difficulty, he touches the man’s glass hands, admiring them again, now smooth and free of the ugly veins of the virus. 

“Winston, you—” John starts, but then Winston pulls him in for a kiss, something else familiar, cutting off his next words. When John next catches his breath, he says, “You have some explaining to do.” 

“Maybe,” Winston agrees with a shrug. He lets go of John and goes to take his place behind the bar. “But first, could I offer you a drink? It’s on the house.” 

Despite himself, John can’t help but smile. It’s an unnatural stretch for his mouth and it almost hurts. “I guess that’s a start.”


End file.
